Fashionable shoes for women frequently are provided with tall, very narrow heels, sometimes referred to as “spiked” or “stiletto” heels. These heels are very narrow and provide a minimal support surface at the bottom, which can make the shoes difficult to walk in on uneven or soft surfaces. For example, on uneven surfaces, such as cobblestone sidewalks and pavements, cracked and uneven sidewalks, ventilation and drainage grates, etc., stiletto heels can easily tip or snag, potentially causing injury to the wearer of the shoes and/or damage to the heels. Likewise, walking on soft surfaces, such as wet ground, can be very difficult when wearing stiletto-heeled shoes.
As will be readily understood, the bottom surface area of a stiletto heel is quite small, such that the pressure loading on the heel surface is very high. The heels thus can easily penetrate and sink down into soft ground or other soft surfaces, making normal walking very difficult. This problem has been well recognized, and some attempts have been made to provide accessory devices, for temporary attachment to stiletto heels, in an effort to provide greater support and stability. Such prior attempts, insofar as we are aware, have been unsuccessful for a variety of reasons. Prior proposals of the Givens U.S. Pat. No. 1,875,806 and Topel U.S. Pat. No. 5,311,675, are rather large and unwieldy. While providing a large bottom surface area, these designs are otherwise quite impractical.
Other proposals, such as the Grossman U.S. Pat. No. 2,875,534 and the Tilden U.S. Pat. No. 3,150,453 while avoiding the overly large and cumbersome characteristics of the before mentioned patents, are flawed in other ways. The device of the Grossman patent is secured to the heel by folded-over flaps of resilient material, which would provide a tenuous attachment, given the forces acting at the bottom of a stiletto heel during normal walking. The device of the Tilden '453 patent, on the other hand, incorporates an unnecessarily complicated hinged clip arrangement and has other faults. The Fredon patent 3,39,435 utilizes magnetic and/or ring clamp arrangements for holding the device to a heel.